News & events

WEST learn from the best | 29/04/2016

The group was made up of trainee Engineers-in-Charge and Shift Technicians who will be charged with operating WEST when it starts up in late 2016.

Since 2000, CCFE has been responsible for running JET on behalf of all the European fusion scientists who come to use it. Our engineers therefore have a wealth of experience that the WEST staff were keen to tap into. CCFE’s Nick Balshaw and Steve Gee led a packed three-day programme of tours and lectures for the group. With a late-night visit to the Torus Hall after operations, and an early morning trip to the Control Room to see JET being fired up for the day’s experiments, there wasn’t much time for sleep!

WEST, situated at the CEA research centre at Cadarache – close to the ITER site – is an upgrade of the Tore Supra tokamak. It will test a tungsten divertor with the same design and manufacture as ITER’s during long plasma pulses of up to 1000 seconds. Unlike its predecessor, WEST will also be used by researchers from other countries, so JET – which is used collaboratively by 26 European nations and more besides – was a useful example for its internationalisation programme.

Julien Hillairet, one of the WEST team on the trip, said: “Running a complex machine like a large tokamak involves many different competences, from high voltage and current supply to high vacuum technologies, water cooling, cryogenics or radiofrequency systems. All of these must be smoothly orchestrated, keeping the staff and the machine safe.

“Our team found the JET visit an immersive experience into what will be our duty and daily life. The CCFE engineers gave their time to enlighten us on the various JET systems, specifically explaining how each of them requires attention. They shared with us their experiences, including tips and caveats. They also presented us the JET workflow during operation; very useful know-how to be adapted for our context of a superconducting steady-state machine. Finally, our visit included the witnessing of the sequence of operations required for both early start and nightly stop of daily operation.

“After this practice, we are now more than ever impatient to start the WEST commissioning phase, where we will discover an almost new machine. Exciting times ahead!”